For drinkers on campus, the times seemed grim.

“Suddenly the future looked all too dry to our freshman friend. No more beers he could call his own,” warned a 1987 Crimson article poking fun at a new University policy requiring printed birth dates on student ID cards.

Additional barriers to alcohol possession included the banning of kegs in freshman dorms in the spring of 1988 and the closing of several Harvard Square bars the year before.

The new College policies, according to Dean of Freshman Thomas A. Dingman ’67, were the result of a University effort to better enforce Massachusetts laws on campus.

“Harvard needed to do more to ascertain who could drink,” said Dingman, Senior Tutor in Leverett House at the time.

But these changes did not necessarily affect the campus drinking culture. Many students on campus when these policies were enacted do not even recall the new restrictions at all, and the Class of 1988 still managed to quench their thirst.

“It was easy to get fake IDs, and people who wanted to drink could do so,” said Shari Rudavsky ’88.

Even the closing of local bars like the Piccadilly Filly, a student hangout in the basement of 119 Mt. Auburn St., and Jack’s, a small venue near Central Square known for its live music, seemed not to matter.

“Well, the Hong Kong was still open,” Rudavsky said, laughing.

Students who wanted to look for a social scene off-campus could still eschew formally organized College events and dorm parties in favor of final clubs and other schools, according to John E. Brzezenski ’91.

On campus as well, social life seemed to carry on as usual.

“I don’t remember any change in the upper class Houses,” said Evan J. Mandery ’89, then chairman of the Undergraduate Council. And even the ban on kegs in freshman dorms did not inhibit a “fairly active social life in the Yard,” according to Brzezenski, who remembers going to many parties in freshman housing. “Nothing suggested that there was a real crackdown on alcohol.”

Dingman, too, said that he believes that alcohol policies were not as strictly enforced on campus as they are today.

“Some [students] complained that the school was forcing some of the entertainment out of their Houses,” said Dingman. “But I didn’t see that.”

While the undergraduate drinking culture did not change, many aspects of student life within the Houses did not involve alcohol.